Would You Let Strangers Decide How You Spend Your Money?
Reading Time: 7 minutesWould You Let Strangers Help You Decide How You Spend Your Money? These People Do., These people do. Inside the community where people get help making small choices of all kinds., How to decide: These people turn to an unusual technique.
In a world of limitless options and limited resources, it’s a familiar bind: whether to spend your hard-earned cash on the fun thing that promises instant gratification, or the sensible one that may pay off in the future.
For 38-year-old Crystal, who is living in Los Angeles, the choice came down to taking a certification course, which would level her up in her career, versus finally finishing her sleeve of tattoos, ‘which would make me happy now,’ she says.
She could only afford one, but turning over the pros and cons wasn’t getting her anywhere—so Crystal put it to a Facebook vote.
A Group That Makes Small Decisions For You brings together nearly 185,000 people from around the world to resolve the sorts of low-stakes questions and choices we all dither over, multiple times a day—from what to eat to what to watch to how to spend a few bucks. Members vote on each other’s quandaries from a handful of given options, and give their reasoning in the comments.
The group stands out within the increasingly desolate Facebook newsfeed, not just for the volume of its posts but also the intensity of engagement, warranting a 30-person-strong moderation team. Cindy Baker, 49, an admin based in Canada, says the group averages around 1,000 posts a week; some members post daily. ‘In some people’s lives, I know it plays a huge role.’
Most dilemmas are minor, true to the group’s name, such as picking between potential outfits, professional headshots, or shades of nail polish. Others seek help with navigating social etiquette, such as how to interpret dress codes or respond to a difficult colleague. On a regular (at least monthly) basis, someone will ask the group if they should get bangs—or, alternatively, grow their bangs out.
When Crystal sought help early last year, the response was ‘overwhelmingly’ in favor of taking the six-to-12-month course over getting the tattoo. ‘I did initially want to ignore it,’ she admits. But the vote, and the group’s given reasons, helped sway her.
‘Some of the advice went beyond picking A or B,’ Crystal says. One member pointed out that while the tattoo might get less exciting, the course would continue paying off.
Another suggested that Crystal ask her employer to help with the cost.
Crystal set aside her ‘strong bias towards instant gratification’ and signed up for the course.
‘It was absolutely the right choice,’ she says. Not only did her employer agree to contribute, Crystal got her certification, got a raise, and used the extra money to finish her sleeve.
‘Having a neutral outsider’s perspective helped a lot,’ Crystal says. She’s also used the group to choose what to order at a new restaurant, what book to read next, and what to wear. ‘It’s really nice getting input from a lot of unbiased people when my brain is feeling like mush.’
The group and its constant stream of posts reflect not only the endless options we all must navigate daily, but the fatigue many people feel at doing so alone. The American adult is estimated to make an average of 35,000 decisions every day; in 2007, researchers at Cornell University found more than 221 pertaining just to food.
Not all of these decisions are significant or consequential, or even made consciously—but an emerging body of science supports the suggestion, widely known as ‘decision fatigue,’ that the more we make, the harder we find it to control our behavior or even know our own minds.
In 2004, psychologist Barry Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, arguing that the explosion in consumer choice had made it harder to make satisfying decisions of any kind. That bind has only been exacerbated by the rise of e-commerce and digital services, Schwartz says, prompting him to begin work on a ‘substantial’ revision of his book: ‘The problem as I described it 20 years ago is a tiny fraction of the problem that we face now.’
Not only do we have many more options available now—of products to buy, food to eat, content to watch—they are spread across different platforms, adding another layer to the process. With so much possibility at our fingertips, making a straightforward decision—to order food delivery, or relax in front of a film—immediately presents more. Pizza or Thai? Uber Eats or DoorDash? Disney+ or AppleTV?
It’s no wonder that—after scrolling for a while—many of us simply give up.
‘We’re all indoctrinated into thinking that there’s nothing more important than autonomy, but it’s a very mixed blessing,’ says Schwartz. ‘Sometimes the relief of doing what you’re told is quite substantial.’
A Group That Makes Small Decisions For You recognizes both the predicament of an abundance of choice and the desire for guidance. It was created in 2019 by a group of friends who’d met through another Facebook group, Give Me Your Money, which facilitates peer-to-peer mutual aid (usually of small amounts).
Helping people with their small decisions seemed similarly civic-minded, says Baker: ‘It just seemed like there was a need that wasn’t being met.’ She, too, has benefited from the online hivemind.
Among the 70-odd total decisions Baker has taken to the group are whether to repair her broken fridge or buy a new one (the group said the latter, she did the former); go for a swim or get stuck into her workday (the vote said swim, and she did); and which of two toys to buy, a Peealot versus a Poopalot. (She got the Poopalot.)
Baker is an artist and a professor, and in much of her life, ‘I have to be really self-motivated,’ she says. ‘It feels like if I can have help with the small decisions, then the big decisions are a little bit easier.’
The group offers clear direction and an impartial judgment, reached at scale. ‘It attracts the overthinkers,’ says Hayley Bennett, a 37-year-old admin based in Perth, Australia, who is neurodivergent. ‘Everywhere wants your money, and there’s more and more options coming out all the time—you really do need help sometimes.’
The rise in people living alone, or without close relationships, also means more are missing a casual sounding board, Bennett suggests. ‘It’s not just being single; a lot more people are isolated in general now.’
She recalls one member, who has since died, who would regularly poll the group about which Band-Aid should cover their cannula tube. ‘They didn’t have a lot of contact with other people, and they just got to have this fun little thing. Everyone got in on it.’
Jasper, 28, from upstate New York, has sought help from the group for everything from picking a Halloween-themed display name on Discord to a particular flavor of prescription cat food. (‘Jaz-o’-lantern’ and duck, respectively, won out.)
He appreciates it as a source of connection as much as advice, going out of his way to vote on others’ dilemmas and ‘perhaps make a difference to someone’s life,’ Jasper says. Whether it’s advising someone on a phone upgrade or a gift for a friend, ‘the little things do change trajectories—it’s cool to be part of the butterfly effect.’
The discussion also opens him up to other perspectives, Jasper says. After sharing a meme he made, for instance, he received feedback that it could be seen as sexist: ‘I didn’t think of it that way at all.’
Just the act of posting can itself be clarifying. ‘Sometimes people picking the thing that I think I want can make me go, ‘OK, no’—it makes me more decisive,’ says 26-year-old Rylie Lynn, another admin, who is based in South Carolina and has ADHD. She posts less to the group now than she used to, reflecting steps she’s taken to reduce her number of daily decisions overall. For instance, having found a particular work shirt at Target, Lynn now owns ‘literally 40’ of them in different sleeve-lengths and colors.
Though the group exists to help people narrow their choices, it can end up expanding them. Lynn had recently been looking to buy a planner, and landed on a handful of possible purchases. But before she could put them to a vote, someone else posted with the same dilemma—but a different array of planners. ‘Now I’m looking at planners again, like, ‘You know, this one does really sound good,’ ‘ she says.
For Schwartz, A Group That Makes Small Decisions For You perfectly illustrates the worsening paradox of choice, and the difficulty of responding to it. On the one hand, he says, it tallies with his original advice to seek informed opinions and ‘decide when to decide,’ so as to preserve your own time and resources.
But Schwartz says that the group may indirectly be compounding the issue of ‘decision fatigue’ by giving weight to minor matters, and stoking anxiety about the ‘wrong’ choice.
After all, you can’t ever know for sure that you’ve got the best possible pair of jeans or the perfect planner. ‘I think the most important thing is to convince yourself that good enough is good enough,’ says Schwartz.
Admins will step in when someone seems to be becoming overly reliant on the group and posting too frequently. They also work hard to maintain the stated boundary of ‘small and medium decisions only’ against a tide of members soliciting input on house purchases, career changes, and even relationships. While ‘major financial decisions’ are left to mods’ discretion, polls on whether to adopt a pet or what to name a baby are no longer allowed.
But even minor dilemmas can generate heated debate. ‘You’d be surprised how many people want help with their hygiene,’ Baker says. Washcloths are particularly controversial: ‘People get really riled up, like, ‘Washcloths are harbingers of bacteria,’ and ‘If you don’t use a washcloth, you’re dirty.’ ‘
It’s exactly the kind of low-stakes debate that keeps social media turning—but the more decisions you register, the more fatigued you feel, says Schwartz. ‘Is it a decision to brush your teeth in the morning when you get up? To put on your two socks, then your two shoes?’
In fact, what registers as a decision is ‘very much culture-dependent,’ says Schwartz, reflecting not only the number of options available but individual freedom to choose. In rich, Western societies that drive us to believe that more options are better, and there’s always one that’s best, it’s down to us to impose limits.
Older people tend to suffer less from decision fatigue, Schwartz adds, having learned over time to settle for good enough. It takes discipline to resist the bounty on offer and relax our ‘ridiculously high standards.’ But once you do, he says, ‘you’ll discover that there are two more hours in the day.’
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2024/11/money-choice-paradox-facebook-help.html
Ref: slate
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